Well, the great 'dazeFEAST proved to be as spectacularly wonderful as we'd hoped. Possibly even more so, since Fate - or the mysterious controllers of the Beijing Weather Machine - consented to grant us one of the half dozen or so most perfect days I've ever seen here for the big day on Saturday.
I just hope organiser Badr and his ever-faithful sidekick/gofer/ad hoc 'stage manger' Ruby managed to enjoy themselves as much as everyone else did - despite the considerable hassles and vexations implicit in putting on a party of such magnitude. Wrangling musicians - particularly persuading them to adhere to any kind of a timetable for going on stage - is on a par with herding cats in the field of 'thankless and impossible tasks'. For a pair of enthusiastic amateurs to attempt to coordinate the performances of a dozen or more different acts in a single evening was nothing less than suicidal lunacy - but they seem to have brought it off, after a fashion, and no blood was spilled. I expect they'll soon be getting a call from Zhang Fan asking them to help manage the roster for the next MIDI Festival.
I believe Badr had planned to alternate acoustic sets on the lawn with louder stuff inside for most of the earlier part of the night, but.... well, apparently some of the artistes were being a bit precious and insisting they wanted to play inside rather than out... and that soon threw the whole schedule out of whack. Randy Abel and his 'Stable' were particularly good sports about allowing themselves to be bumped down the bill to accommodate others' whims (not finally getting on stage until a couple of hours after they were originally supposed to have done). Somehow or other, though, Badr and Ruby managed to keep things ticking over, and they were more or less back on track by the latter end of the night. I gather the music wrapped up around 3am.... although there were a few dozen diehards loitering for some hours after that!!
My own enjoyment was somewhat hampered by a dodgy stomach, and an outrageously early start at work the next day (Sunday? sacrilege!!), and I had to quit by 11pm. However, I'd already seen a lot of great music by that point. The initial phase of the event was just wonderful - lounging in the shaded sofas around the lawn as the venue quickly began to fill, catching up with numerous old friends, and enjoying a series of laidback acoustic jams in the gorgeous late afternoon sunshine. An early highlight was the French guitar wiz Jean-Sebastien Héry, in uncommonly ebullient mood, playing his folkie Zhang Si'an stuff solo on the zhongruan (a type of Chinese lute, with a large round soundbox) - and experimenting with using a few simple loops to accompany himself (inveterate experimentalists like Li Tieqiao and Xiao He have been known to overdo this technique over the past year or two, but J-S exhibited decent restraint and it worked amazingly well).
I was very pleased to see that the Daze crew had been taking notes from my recent how to/how not to hold a music festival post: they even had (FREE) WATER available (although the folks from host venue 2 Kolegas kept trying to hide it, presumably for fear that it would eat into their beer sales - they need not have worried!).
All in all, a great, GREAT day. Many thanks to Badr and Ruby, the folks at 2K, Orange Amplifiers for lending some spiffing sound equipment for the day, all the musicians.... and everyone else who helped out. Could this possibly become an annual event?? Let's hope so!
[I found perhaps the most interesting aspect of this endeavour was the emphatic proof it provided that FREE events can work. In a city where cover charges at music bars are still a relative novelty, and where most music fans are not very well off (well, the local kids anyway; though quite a few of us laowai aren't exactly drowning in disposable income these days, either), a hefty door fee discourages a lot of punters, significantly reduces the attendance.
OK, so this was a one-off special event with a heap of different bands participating, but... I think the model would still apply to smaller shows with a limited roster of bands. Bars make their money from alcohol sales. Bands make their money from merchandise sales. Door fees, I very strongly suspect, tend to depress the amount of spending per capita; and they certainly diminish the number of people showing up. Scrapping door fees is a win-win, I would say. (Or it would be, if bands were better at peddling their merch. Many of them are rubbish at it. And I suppose they see a percentage of the door as being 'easy money' that they don't have to put out any additional effort for. I say they need to start rethinking that.)]
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